Hands-on with HTC One, a powerful phone that may not be for power users

The "ultrapixel" camera and BlinkFeed offer a lot of hand-holding.

HTC announced its next flagship Android phone, the HTC One, at a press event Tuesday in New York City. The company placed heavy emphasis on the phone’s new UI overlay, "Android with HTC Sense", on top of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, as well as its BlinkFeed information service and a new ultrapixel camera. HTC seems set on making the phone do a lot of the work for the user, which should be helpful to casual customers but might frustrate others who prefer more control.

The screen on the HTC One is bright and very crisp, and we’re very glad to see more and more manufacturers step up to a 1080p resolution (468 pixels per inch). We’re still finding, as with HTC’s last big launch with the Droid DNA, that this feature and svelte body design end up coming at the cost of battery life and size. But the new HTC One packs a 2300 mAh battery, where the Droid DNA’s was only 2020 mAh, so it may have less trouble with running out of juice mid-day.

The HTC One aluminum body feels nice to hold, with a back that curves into tapered edges on all sides. The headphone jack resides on the top of the phone, with a micro-USB port offset to one side on the bottom edge.

The top of the HTC one, with headphone jack and sleep button.

The bottom of the HTC One, with a microphone and micro-USB port.

Camera

One of the big features of the HTC One is its camera, which HTC bills as an “ultrapixel model,” so named because the sensor is able to capture 300 percent more light than normal smartphones. According to the HTC’s spec breakdown, the camera has an f2.0 aperture, 28mm lens, a pixel size of 2.0 micrometers, and a 1/3” sensor format. For comparison, the iPhone 5 has an f2.4 aperture, 1.4-micrometer pixel size, and 1/3.2” sensor format.

But while the iPhone 5 and most contemporary Android smartphones have 8-megapixel cameras, the HTC One’s ultrapixel model is 4 megapixels. HTC wants to transcend the megapixel rat race with better-quality, more capable pixels, but if the only more capable dimension is its ability to capture more light (presumably more quickly), we aren’t sure that alone will facilitate a better camera.

We recognize this is far from a scientific comparison, but this is a shot of a shot from the HTC One...

... and the same shot of a shot, with the same lighting conditions, on the iPhone 4S. Neither are perfect, but the HTC One's photo is pretty washed out.

We tried out the camera quickly in single-shot mode, aimed at a couple of low-light scenarios, and then tried the same shots with an iPhone 4S in HDR mode. The HTC One’s photos seemed to have an unnatural glow to them and did not seem particularly crisp, though we’ll reserve full judgment until we can see the photos on a full-size screen.

The camera automatically opens in “Zoe” mode, which captures a few seconds of video in lieu of a single shot. This video is captured at the rear camera’s full resolution, and users can pull out single shots from that short clip. This seems like a quick way to eat up storage space, though it may help in shoot-from-the-hip situations where users may prefer to get the camera going first and set up the shot as it captures, trading suboptimal shots for an altogether missed opportunity.

“Information snacking”

As for Sense, HTC repeatedly, insistently referred to its BlinkFeed during its presentation feature as a way to facilitate “information snacking,” something to do while you’re standing in line at a coffee shop or waiting at the doctor’s office. We were surprised how completely this analogy follows through: the feed, while temporarily sating, doesn’t look like it will be capable of offering much in the way of nutritious info.

Most snack foods are for people who, at that moment, don’t care what they put into their bodies, as long as it’s something to quell the hunger pangs. Likewise, the BlinkFeed seems to be for people who don’t care a whole lot about what they put into their brains, as long as it sates the desire to be entertained.

HTC's BlinkFeed, front and center on the main home screen. Scrolling down shows users a bundle of stories from sources of their choosing (within certain constraints) in a very visual layout.

A selection of social media services can feed BlinkFeed. The choices are far from comprehensive.

Users can fill their BlinkFeed with stories by category, but the sources that feed those categories are not specified.

That’s not to say there aren’t quality services feeding the BlinkFeed. Possible additions include Reuters, The Guardian, and The Independent, but that’s all, right now, for straight news. A representative told Ars that more services would be added before the phone hits store shelves in six weeks, but even this doesn’t entirely solve the problem.

The BlinkFeed appears to lack the ability to add custom feeds from other social services, the way one can with an RSS feed or apps like Flipboard. BlinkFeed does integrate with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but it’s not possible to, say, throw in a single Twitter account, as one can with Flipboard. BlinkFeed can also create a feed of Zoe videos from fellow HTC One users, similar to the videos served by the app Vine. However, HTC maintains that network itself, and it will only keep posted Zoe videos for 180 days.

I tend to be picky about where and how I consume news and information. My job necessitates that I be able to go through a lot of information, quickly, from sources I trust, and I also need to iterate and edit that part of my workflow regularly. Hence, BlinkFeed would be a bust for me. The service’s constraints, which should lessen by the time the phone launches, may be acceptable to most users who value quick access over control and don’t feel the need to optimize that part of their information consumption, but it doesn’t appear it will ever let them do much of the source selection work themselves.

Tried and true power users may be few in number, so centering a consumer smartphone on their needs may not be a commercially viable endeavor. But HTC seems to have foregone a lot of flexibility that would accommodate those who like a little more control in favor of guiding customers' hands in how they use the phone. This may not only be difficult to adapt to; it could also be difficult to leave behind.

If you like everything about the phone but BlinkFeed, you’re out of luck: as the phone ships, BlinkFeed is the main home screen, and reps tell us there is no way to change this.

The HTC One is set to debut in “late March” for $199 with a two-year contract on Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T, as well as on over 100 more carriers worldwide.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

That can't be right about Blinkfeed being the main home screen. It looks like another Sense widget, which you should be able to remove, even if you stick with the Sense (do they still call it Rosie?) launcher.

And yeah, custom launchers will kill it. It's always been the case in the past that none of the Sense widgets will work on a 3rd party launcher, which seems like a stupid decision, but HTC seems to be fine with that.

Also, limiting the camera to 4MP images - can that really be correct? I understand not jumping into the MP race, but 8MP has been the standard for the last few years - surely they can't at least maintain that image size while focusing (ha) on image quality improvements? The 8MP images from the iphone 5 and GS3 are really, really nice. I don't know why 4MP images would be a selling point.

Android power users can always remove bloatware. That's the core benefit of Android.

HTC has made it immensely difficult to unlock bootloaders on a few of their recent phones. Not everything works with their HTC dev site for bootloader unlocking, and if it doesn't, root tools like JuopunutBear (and wire tricks) are a real pain to use. Not only that, a lot of HTC phones never ended up with decent AOSP ROM's because HTC just never made the necessary files available.

I wouldn't buy a HTC phone counting on developers to flock around it anymore. Sad, because that used to be the case.

So, you took a photo with the One set on Auto, and a comparison photo with an iPhone set on HDR? What was the point?

That's asinine.

That's like a Canon vs. Nikon DSLR shootout where you leave the lens cap on one brand but not the other.

EDIT: Downvote me all you want, but the point stands.

The iPhone doesn't default to the HDR setting... it had to purposefully be changed before taking the shot. Why not just show us the same scene in this "unscientific" test by leaving both phones set to the default automatic setting? Instead, the author took the time to change the setting on the iPhone to match the scene being shot, therefore giving it a favorable outcome. It just makes no sense. What was even the point of the comparison except to fill page space, then?

Android power users can always remove bloatware. That's the core benefit of Android.

"Comes with bloatware that sufficiently advanced users can remove" is the core benefit? That's... not the best value prop.

I'd argue that the core benefit is that Android is free, so manufacturers can either ship cheaper phones or put some of the consumer surplus towards better phones. You get something that is arguably as good as any other platform for a much lower price.

The fact that hardcore users can get into the system enough to "fix" the carriers' and manufacturers' indirect monetization paths is too fringe to be the core benefit to hundreds of millions of people.

Too bad about the tradeoffs. It looks like a nice phone, reminiscent of the old HTC Legend with the aluminum unibody (http://i.imgur.com/kTqwNfF.jpg).

I might be willing to deal with a passable 4MP camera (since I have a regular camera for the good stuff) if I knew I could just run stock Android on it.

As it stands, I don't miss Sense at all from my time with an HTC phone a couple of years ago and I don't run widgets that auto-update as a general rule of thumb. I don't like the battery drain and if I want to read Facebook or whatever, I'll load it up.

I'm sure there will be cleaned-up ROMs for this at some point but it will just be another set of hardware with no drivers or kernel source to build from so I doubt there will be a good vanilla port for a little while. I don't mind installing an alternate ROM any more than I mind installing a different OS on my PC but it needs to be stable/optimized.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here but seriously, why don't any of these guys just make a kick-ass phone with stock Android (or at least with just a few of their own apps that can be used or uninstalled)? Plenty of computer companies compete on build quality and hardware while sticking with (essentially) stock Windows. Why can't more phone OEMs do the same? Their custom launchers are so integrated with various frameworks that you never get the same kind of performance as stock even if you install Nova or Apex or whatever.

Too bad about the tradeoffs. It looks like a nice phone, reminiscent of the old HTC Legend with the aluminum unibody (http://i.imgur.com/kTqwNfF.jpg).

I might be willing to deal with a passable 4MP camera (since I have a regular camera for the good stuff) if I knew I could just run stock Android on it.

As it stands, I don't miss Sense at all from my time with an HTC phone a couple of years ago and I don't run widgets that auto-update as a general rule of thumb. I don't like the battery drain and if I want to read Facebook or whatever, I'll load it up.

I'm sure there will be cleaned-up ROMs for this at some point but it will just be another set of hardware with no drivers or kernel source to build from so I doubt there will be a good vanilla port for a little while. I don't mind installing an alternate ROM any more than I mind installing a different OS on my PC but it needs to be stable/optimized.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here but seriously, why don't any of these guys just make a kick-ass phone with stock Android (or at least with just a few of their own apps that can be used or uninstalled)? Plenty of computer companies compete on build quality and hardware while sticking with (essentially) stock Windows. Why can't more phone OEMs do the same? Their custom launchers are so integrated with various frameworks that you never get the same kind of performance as stock even if you install Nova or Apex or whatever.

Everything you just wrote in that post screams "I need a Nexus!". If you don't already have one, I'm guessing you're stuck on Verizon/Sprint or that the lack of LTE is a dealbreaker for you.

The next best thing for you would probably be the Xperia Z - great design, similar specs, LTE support and Android is almost like stock with minimal modifications. Sony is also developer friendly and make their bootloaders unlockable too.

One advantage of a lower res (and still decent) camera is the fact that the photo's file sizes can be much smaller without compressing every fine detail out of them. I think in most cases 4 or 5 MP is totally fine if (and this is a big if) the quality is there. I'm really looking forward to more formal camera testing here.

But the hardware of this phone really is nice. Stereo front speakers are really great, an IR diode could be very useful and the alu case looks good.

This blinkfeed thing seems pretty much useless to me, especially when there's not even RSS support. Or what's with email from whitelisted users, calls and texts? Seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

So they decided to call the homescreen "BlinkFeed" because "Metro" and "Modern UI" were already taken, right? From the live tiles to the 2D chromeless weather widget, the similarity to WP is staggering.

Microsoft must be kicking themselves for choosing HTC over Nokia as their "signature" OEM. HTC brings their best hardware to Android, not WP, and to add insult to injury, borrows WP8's aesthetics and features to put on HTC's Android phones.

Android power users can always remove bloatware. That's the core benefit of Android.

Hmm, i think i prefer an os whose core benefit is that it doesn't come without any of that bloatware in the first place.

You say that, but I think a strong case could be made that a preloaded, locked-in store that is the only place you can install applications from is bloatware. On a Dell, it's preloaded and called Dell Shop, for Toshiba, it's called App Place, and on an iPhone, it's called the App Store. On 2 of those 3, you can uninstall it and get your programs elsewhere.

I think I prefer the styling of my HTC One X+ I was afraid I'd regret my somewhat recent purchase, but aesthetically I prefer the all-black to those bright stripes top and bottom. Though I do like the idea of the stereo speakers.

So, you took a photo with the One set on Auto, and a comparison photo with an iPhone set on HDR? What was the point?

That's asinine.

That's like a Canon vs. Nikon DSLR shootout where you leave the lens cap on one brand but not the other.

EDIT: Downvote me all you want, but the point stands.

The iPhone doesn't default to the HDR setting... it had to purposefully be changed before taking the shot. Why not just show us the same scene in this "unscientific" test by leaving both phones set to the default automatic setting? Instead, the author took the time to change the setting on the iPhone to match the scene being shot, therefore giving it a favorable outcome. It just makes no sense. What was even the point of the comparison except to fill page space, then?

That is very odd, I would like to hear a response from the author of the article.

The screen on the HTC One is bright and very crisp, and we’re very glad to see more and more manufacturers step up to a 1080p resolution (468 pixels per inch).

On that size of screen, is there any perceptible difference between 468 ppi and the 300-350 ppi that a lot of other devices use? Or at least, enough of a difference to justify the battery hit? I confess, I can't see the point of a 1080p display on a (relatively) small screen like that.

Ditch Sense and I might be interested. Why don't Android OEM's understand that I don't want their skin. ANY OF IT. I just want good hardware.

They have to differentiate (or at least they believe that they do).

So this is it? The churn of new hardware continues unabated, but functionally it seems like we've reached the apex of what a smartphone can do and be and the only thing left to do is see what the big companies do with the software underneath.

The big innovations here are photography related (nice, but not revolutionary) and a new skin.

Not the direction I'd like to see these things go, and rather ugly IMHO. Guess I'll have to cling to my One X for at least another year, but I feel like my next "phone" will just be a Galaxy Note III using VoIP.

The screen on the HTC One is bright and very crisp, and we’re very glad to see more and more manufacturers step up to a 1080p resolution (468 pixels per inch).

On that size of screen, is there any perceptible difference between 468 ppi and the 300-350 ppi that a lot of other devices use? Or at least, enough of a difference to justify the battery hit? I confess, I can't see the point of a 1080p display on a (relatively) small screen like that.

My Galaxy Nexus has a ppi of 315 and I can easily discern the difference between pixels, especially as the screen ages. It isn't as jarring as it was on my previous phone, the Droid Milestone, but it isn't as good as I would like.

Your HTC one photo example shows both "Crazy Asian" and "Bald White Guy" which we all know will distort any phone's white balance. I'd suggest taking a pic without those bits of noise for a true comparison.

Other than that, I'm glad to see they decided on putting the power button on the side, since on their other 4.7" monster phones the top is literally a stretch to get to.

The software features though seem like a miss. I don't expect HTC to get right what all my individual apps do perfectly, even if it's just something like Falcon Pro for Twitter (utilizing many lists for my daily reads) or something like Pulse for news.

In the end I just want them to build a great quality phone without ruining Android too much - something they haven't been able to do for years now. I don't expect this phone to be much of a change from that.

The iPhone doesn't default to the HDR setting... it had to purposefully be changed before taking the shot. Why not just show us the same scene in this "unscientific" test by leaving both phones set to the default automatic setting? Instead, the author took the time to change the setting on the iPhone to match the scene being shot, therefore giving it a favorable outcome. It just makes no sense. What was even the point of the comparison except to fill page space, then?

That is very odd, I would like to hear a response from the author of the article.

According to the quote below, it can be left on all the time so that you have your choice of two images: the regular, and the HDR one. I would bet that the author simply used the best of the two images she had to work with.

Quote:

The resulting iPhone photos are closer to what the human eye really sees, with more details in the shadows and highlights than a standard image would have.

Because the iPhone’s HDR setting frequently results in improved images, it’s tempting to leave it on all the time. After all, you can set the camera to save a regular copy of each photo to your Camera Roll, along with the HDR version (Settings->Photos). If one shot doesn’t wow you, you still have option B.

The screen on the HTC One is bright and very crisp, and we’re very glad to see more and more manufacturers step up to a 1080p resolution (468 pixels per inch).

On that size of screen, is there any perceptible difference between 468 ppi and the 300-350 ppi that a lot of other devices use? Or at least, enough of a difference to justify the battery hit? I confess, I can't see the point of a 1080p display on a (relatively) small screen like that.

The 468 ppi devices has substantially lower frame rates for a given graphics chip and/or requires bigger, more power hungry chips to keep up. Oh wait, you wanted a positive? They look better for people who use their phone less than a foot from their face.

The screen on the HTC One is bright and very crisp, and we’re very glad to see more and more manufacturers step up to a 1080p resolution (468 pixels per inch).

On that size of screen, is there any perceptible difference between 468 ppi and the 300-350 ppi that a lot of other devices use? Or at least, enough of a difference to justify the battery hit? I confess, I can't see the point of a 1080p display on a (relatively) small screen like that.

My Galaxy Nexus has a ppi of 315 and I can easily discern the difference between pixels, especially as the screen ages. It isn't as jarring as it was on my previous phone, the Droid Milestone, but it isn't as good as I would like.

You must have much better eyes than me. I've never had any complaints with the screen on my Galaxy Nexus.

In your unscientific test the photo from the HTC shows a lot more detail everywhere (especially in the blacks), which is generally a desirable thing. You can indeed, if you want, describe it as "washed-out" next to an image with crushed blacks.